Herdt: Our legislative districts just too big

It is likely not possible to propose an idea that would be more universally condemned, certainly at first blush, but hear me out:

What California needs is more legislators.

As unwelcome as that idea may seem, the conclusion is inescapable to anyone who listened to the pleas of Californians who testified this summer before the Citizens Redistricting Commission. Without fail, they said they did not want to be put in a district with other people with whom they had nothing in common and they wanted one of their own to represent them.

Under the system we've got, that isn't possible.

The size of the Legislature — 80 Assembly members, 40 senators — was established in 1879. At the time, there were fewer than 1 million people living here.

Today, there are 37.3 million. That means that an Assembly district must contain about 465,000 people and each Senate district about 931,000.

"It's awfully challenging to look at what are the common interests in these very large districts," acknowledged Commissioner Cynthia Dai of San Francisco.

How big is a Senate district? Five of the 50 states have fewer people. The districts are 10 times larger than the national average, three times bigger than those in the second-place state, Texas.

In their 2010 book "California Crackup," scholars Mark Paul and Joe Mathews calculated that a member of the Assembly, working 40 hours a week for 30 weeks of the year, doing nothing except speaking individually to constituents for six minutes each during his or her two-year term would be able to speak to only one out of every 20.

The book suggests switching to a unicameral Legislature of the same size. That would create 120 districts of about 300,000 people each. Mathews also muses about revolutionizing the governance of this nation-state by breaking it into regions and transferring many current legislative functions to regional governments.

Other ideas are emerging, such as one that John Cox and his nascent reform group Rescue California have struck upon.

Cox, an Illinois transplant who briefly sought the Republican nomination for president in 2008, is shepherding a proposed initiative for the November 2012 ballot. It would create a Legislature of — take a seat before you read this — 5,588 members.

Here's the idea: Each neighborhood Assembly district would have 10,000 people and each Senate district 20,000. After representatives are elected, those from clusters of 46 (the size of an existing Assembly district) would get together and select one delegate to go to Sacramento to be part of a "working group" that would do legislative business.

Every bill passed by the working group would then be subject to an up-or-down vote (no further amendments allowed) of all the neighborhood legislators.

Because lawmakers would work part time, it would cost taxpayers no more than the existing Legislature. Neighborhood representatives would be paid $1,000 a year, and those in the working group $10,000 plus daily living expenses of up to $100 while in Sacramento.

Cox believes it's the best way to restore truly representative government — and to eliminate what he calls "the corruptive issue of money" in legislative campaigns.

He points to New Hampshire as a model. It's a state with just 1.2 million people, but the lower house of its Legislature has 400 members, each representing 3,000 constituents. They campaign by talking to their neighbors, not by sending out hit pieces in the mail.

"The concept is that people serve for the honor and the public duty," Cox said. "Candidates who spend more than $1,000 are looked upon as charlatans."

The draft language of the initiative can be found at http://RescueCalifornia.org. "By hook or by crook, it's going to be on the ballot in November 2012," Cox told me.

He is not without resources. He's paid for a poll that found 60 percent public support for the idea, and four years ago he lent his brief presidential campaign slightly more than $1 million.

He's discussed the idea with leading public-policy thinkers in the state and says no one has shot a hole through it yet.

The idea, he says, "should appeal to liberals and conservatives." It would likely result in the elections of several representatives who are neither Democrats nor Republicans. All would be forced to form coalitions, to compromise.

"The one thing you will know at the end of the day is that the person who gets elected will represent the district."

That isn't the case today. It can't be — not with 40 senators who each represent more people than the governor of Vermont.